Making VNC server run on boot on Ubuntu

The goal: Having installed vncserver, make it run automatically on boot, without anyone needing to log in.

Environment: Amazon Web Services EC2 instance running Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS 64-bit. Vncserver was installed as per these instructions.

To start vncserver on boot:

• Open an SSH connection to the server.
• cd /etc/init.d
• sudo vim vncserver-start, then insert this text:

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          scriptname
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $syslog
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start daemon at boot time
# Description:       Enable service provided by daemon.
### END INIT INFO
#! /bin/sh
sudo -u ubuntu vncserver -geometry 1200x650

• sudo chmod +x tomcat-start
• sudo update-rc.d tomcat-start defaults

One of the more interesting parts is the need to NOT run vncserver as root. When vncserver-start executes on boot, it executes as root. Launching vncserver as root results in an error. The solution is to prepend sudo -u ubuntu on the last line of vncserver-start.